Ergänzungen zur Schlagwortliste

P2P |

Distributed Constructionism |

JXTA |

Open System Architecture

Inhalt

Inhaltliche Beschreibung

The Yuvia collaboration platform is a software approach to Knowledge Management with attention to creativity, based on the principle of distributed constructionism and cognition. It belongs to three of the Knowledge Management software categories, namely groupware, P2P-based software, and Visual Tools. Yuvia is a novel approach to Knowledge Management, extending existing approaches in several ways. First, it aims at a so far hardly addressed field, namely Knowledge Management for individuals and small groups (PKM). Second, it embraces the P2P technology, whose advantages are scalability, availability of resources, and efficient use of infrastructure. Third and most important, it is novel in the idea of a visual browsing interface for knowledge exchange, constructed by the persons working with it, comprising the advantages of distributed constructionism and distributed cognition. Forth and last, as an open system architecture project, it allows and encourages extension by developers, making the whole software adaptable to the needs of users and the changing conditions of the environment. Overall, it aims to shape a consistent approach from philosophy to technology to application.Although Yuvia can be used unconnectedly, usually users connect and thus become peers of the Yuvia P2P network. Yuvia provides users an environment to create and join collaborative workspaces. Workspaces enable users to jointly construct a project model by modeling a 2-dimensional Map, consisting of Nodes and Connections, that will serve as the team's mutual environment. In this environment, users can continue to construct the model and share thoughts and files (knowledge resources) on the specified topic in a graphical way.These jointly constructed Maps are the central part of Yuvia. A variety of Node and Connection types enable users to explore and construct different kinds of Maps and to model all kinds of knowledge domains. In addition, as developers may always introduce new Node and Connection types, the Map's potential may grow continually.Once, part of the Map is modeled, the Map is a browsable environment that keeps evolving and changing. It offers the possibility to obtain knowledge within its context, while revealing spatial, social, and semantic aspects of the asset. In this way, the Map offers added value, as it reveals additional and less conscious information. Furthermore, it always reflects the current state of the project, revealing voids, hot spots, and trends, and decreases communication overhead. To support collaboration efficiently, Yuvia supports awareness with respect to synchronous and asynchronous work, helping to establish team spirit and trust and making real-time collaboration possible.As Yuvia has an open system architecture and the programming structure is designed to be easily customizable and extendable, the concept also encourages continuous development by programmers. The software itself can thus be jointly constructed by its users and thus may keep changing and adapting to the needs of its users.

Technik

Technische Beschreibung

To allow collaboration and synchronization, Yuvia establishes a P2P network, based on either a Local Area Network (LAN) or the Internet.

Hardware / Software

We impplemented the prototype with Java using the stable release JXTA 2.0.